"This 'translation' of absence through song is called këngë kurbeti, migration song. Its drone-based polyphonic form is prominent south of the river Shkumbin—in an area that includes Vlorë and other villages from which thousands of Albanians have left their motherland. These songs, which are part of a shared Mediterranean polyphonic tradition, are unique in their vitality as a life-affirming everyday practice and in their surviving modes of transmission, a fact that was acknowledged prominently when UNESCO proclaimed “Albanian folk-iso polyphony” a “masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity” in 2005. Such songs show the relevance of locally rooted traditional practice—particularly in the age of globalized media networks— in commenting and making sense of the present, continuously transforming an inherited vocal practice. Any such performance is marked by a “sharing of pain” between singers and their audience. The authority of the singer is constituted by the way he or she manages to emotionalize the audience and to transmit mall, a multifaceted emotional state of social, spatial, and sonic nostalgia."from the liner notes/essay The Comfort of Sounds in a World of Absences by Eckehard Pistrick, 2016

The vinyl album "I Have Left You the Mountain" published as part of the exhibition "Metamorphoses – Let Everything Happen to You", March 5 – June 24 , 2018 at Castello di Rivoli, Turino, Italy. Curated by Chus Martínez.

Originally produced on the occasion of the Albanian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, 2016. Supported by the Ministry of Culture of Albania. First released as English/Albanian version under the catalogue number AE029 in 2016.

ISBN 978-3-95679-239-7

Press:

"If we take architecture to be any spatial practice informed by a body of knowledge shaped from social, political, economic, geographic, cultural, and aesthetic qualities, ‘I Have Left You the Mountain,’ the Albanian pavilion curated by Simon Battisti, Leah Whitman-Salkin, and graphic design collective Åbäke, stands out as an affecting work, lingering in one’s thoughts long after visiting. The exhibition is about ‘the architecture of displacement.’" in FRIEZE "Conditions of Living - Reflections on the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale" by Carson Chan, June 2016